Harvard advancements in "ethical" stem cells

[brainandspinalcord]

According to a Washington Post article, Harvard scientists have figured out how to turn one type of adult stem cell into another. What makes this development even more interesting is that it wasn’t done in a petri dish - this change was created inside of a living animal.

This breakthrough will potentially lead to cures for currently "un-fixable" illnesses and injuries such as spinal cord injuries (SCI) as well as heart disease, diabetes, etc. while bypassing the ethical objections that are now hindering stem cell research.

more on ethical stem cells (http://www.brainandspinalcord.org/blog/2008/09/an-ethical-advance-in-stem-cell-research/) here.

[gpawelski]

Stem cells will be able to be created using a "second generation" embryonic stem cell technology. Take an adult skin cell, introduce a small number of genes which direct the "committed" adult skin cell to revert all the way back to an embryonic stem cell.

The technology was first developed/reported in Japan. It's was independently confirmed at Harvard because they've got a lot of private money to do the work. Initial work had been done with mouse embryonic stem cells and mouse skin cells "turned back" to embryonic stem cells.

It is hardly a remarkable event. All cells from a single individual have the same DNA. It's only a matter of controlling which part of the total DNA is active. There is no reason a cell can't be reprogrammed to return to precisely the state it was in which it was a primitive embryonic stem cell or the original stem cell - the fertilized egg itself.

No matter how anyone wants to interpret it, this "second generation" technology embryonic stem cell would have the same genetic material and the same capabilities as the "first generation" technology embryonic stem cell. The cells are created by going backwards, introducing a handful of gene to reprogram the DNA of an adult cell, so that the cell reverts back to the state of a newly fertilized egg.

It would be the same cell as it was at the time it was a newly fertilized egg. It would genetically be an identical twin, a clone of the originial fertilized egg. In every sense of the word, it has the same potential for developing into a baby.

In terms of them being 100% identical, save for the 4 extraneous genes introduced to turn the non-pluripotent skin (somatic) cell back into a true embryonic stem cell, these genes would either silence themselves spontaneously or could be silenced using already available technology like RNA interference.

This is Second Generaton Embryonic Stem Cell Technology. The scientific wing of the Catholic Church has not figured this out yet and is basically embracing this Second Generation Embryonic Stem Cell Technology as a fig leaf for withdrawing from the stem cell wars, which is a Genie that has forever escaped from the bottle.